Unraveling
by 1Styx and Stones1
Summary: Because life is not fair. And because memories twist and turn like the plastic wires beneath her hands. Like a braid.


**Long and sad. I love it.**

**Disclaimer: Just that sick mind. **

November in Washington D.C. is wet.

Fall is picturesque, with golden foliage and crisp weather, but the slow transition into winter brings rain that is so different from the merry sun showers of summer that sound like music and smell like ozone. This rain is dreary and steady. It turns the grass to mud and the sky to a stormy sea of grey nothingness. Sodden clumps of leaves dot the ground like fallen corpses on a flooded battlefield. The brilliant scarlets and golds fade to a monotous dirty brown.

It is so far from the summer days that sang with childish laughter and swam with day-dreams and butterflies, and yet there is something satisfyingly fitting about it. Red and gold leaves that fluttered in the wind like ethereal butterflies now dot the ground, crumpled and brown and rotten.

There is something unmistakably ironic buried beneath the soaking clumps of brown.

Days like this seem to lack life in general, but today there is only one life missing, as far as Ziva is concerned, and its absence leaves the world with a gaping emptiness that shows itself only in the grey of the sky and the sick feeling in her gut.

She can't help but remember.

...

_Ziva was four years old when her younger sister was born. Her father made her watch as her mother gave birth. She remembers that there was no sugar in the Jell-O she ate, and too much in the voice of the nurse who talked her mother through the procedure. She remembers afterwards, when the screams subsided, that she rushed to her mother to find tears in the large brown eyes that squeezed shut as they embraced._

_"Why are you crying, Ima?"_

_If her mother answered, she does not remember it._

_Her father would not let her hold the baby, but he did let her stroke the soft downy blackness that coated the teeny head with chubby, curious fingers and wide eyes. _

_She remembers, in particular, that her father stroked her mother's hair as he sat beside the bed with the baby. She sat in the corner and watched, spooning tasteless green gelatin into her mouth and scrubbing furiously on a piece of paper with crayons. _

_The picture she produced was entitled, in illegible childish scrawl, 'My Family.' Three stick figures, one with glasses, one with long squiggles that vaguely resembled hair, and a slightly smaller girl, wearing a pink dress and a princess crown, all clustered about a teeny blob with a smiling face and a mini crown all its own. She remembers being immensely prideful of this work of art._

_She remembers, when her father departed for a moment to use the restroom, asking her mother as she cautiously ran her tiny fingers over the baby's tinier digits, "Ima?"_

_"Hmm?" her mother's voice was soft and a bit hoarser than usual. She kept a gentle hand on Ziva's as the little girl made awed revolutions on her baby sister's head._

_"Did Abba sit with you when I was borned?" Ziva asked, gently touching baby Tali's nose. "And did he pat your hair and never leave, e'cept to go to the bathroom?"_

_Ima's eyes, Ziva remembers, clouded slightly. "Abba couldn't be there when you were born, tateleh. He had very important work to do. But Ari was here. He was very little then."_

_"As little as me?" The thought was strange that Ari, big Ari who Ziva fearfully adored, had ever been little._

_"Perhaps not that little." Her mother's smile was soft and maybe a little bit sad._

_"But Abba wasn't there?"_

_"No," Ima had agreed, "Abba wasn't there."_

_Ziva nodded and removed her hand cautiously from little Tali's head. She climbed down from the big bed and padded around in her light-up sneakers to press a sticky kiss that tasted of sugarless lime Jello to her mother's smooth cheek. _

_Then she trotted over to the small table in the corner where her beautiful picture lay, ready to be shown to Abba on his return. After a moment of quiet deliberation, Ziva selected her sharpest black crayon from her battered box._

_In three vindictive slashes, Tali was effectively eliminated from the family._

_And so Ziva David began to hate her sister._

...

He knows.

She doesn't know how, but Tony knows what today is. He doesn't say anything, for which she is eternally grateful, but she can feel his eyes on her as she sits at her desk and works as hard as she can at looking normal.

When she looks up and catches his eye on purpose, he neither leers nor quickly looks away, just looks steadily back with something akin to concern in his eyes.

She is the first to break eye contact.

...

_"Ziva! Ziva! I want to play, too!" Tali whines, tugging at Ziva's shirt as she bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, set to throw herself into action should the need for a temper tantrum arise. _

_Ziva, she remembers, a grown up third-grader, was appalled at her sister's stupidity. "It's not playing, Tali," she said with exasperated patience. "It's reading."_

_"I can read!" Tali insisted, stamping a foot and bouncing a bit more violently._

_"No, you can't," Ziva said scornfully. "I could read when I was five, right, Ima?" _

_Her mother, eyes a bit more tired, skin a bit paler, voice a bit wearier than it had been five years ago, nodded. "Yes, tateleh."_

_Ziva nodded, satisfied. "Then why can Tali not?"_

_Tali pouted. "Mean!"_

_"No," Ziva corrected calmly. "Smart."_

_At this, Ziva remembers, Tali's huge brown eyes filled with tears, and the little heart-shaped face crumpled. "Mean, mean, mean!"_

_The little girl ran from the room, only to bump into Abba, who immediately scooped up the tiny girl. "Tateleh, why do you cry?"_

_Tali merely whimpered and buried her little face in Abba's neck. Ziva stood, feeling slightly fearful. "I was just saying, Abba, that I could read when I was Tali's age," she explained, anxiously pulling on her curls._

_Abba smiled the smile that, even now, could make Ziva's heart swell, because the pride in his eyes made her feel incredibly important, whether she was nine or twenty-nine._

_"That you could, tateleh," he agreed. "She is very smart, is she not, Ari?"_

_"Yes, Abba." From behind her father, Ari stepped into view, winking at Ziva before nodding respectfully to Ima._

_"Ari!"_

_Ziva ran to hug her half-brother, and he wrapped his arms around her. "Shalom, Zivaleh. You are getting big."_

_Ziva remembers, again, the immense feeling of pride that came from Ari's casual remark. She had nodded importantly. "Yes. I am learning how to times numbers."_

_Ari smiled at Eli. "Very big indeed."_

_Eli grinned in return. "Soon it will be she joining the IDF."_

_Ima looked up at this, but she did not smile. "What? Oh, Ari!"_

_For a second, Ari's eyes looked different as he shared a long look with Ima. Then he reached down to ruffle Ziva's curls fondly. "And then we will become the best Mossad agents in all of Israel, won't we, Zivaleh?"_

_Ziva had smiled, pleased that Ari thought so much of her. "Oh, yes!"_

_Abba's eyes, suddenly, changed, like Ari's had a moment earlier, as he looked at his daughter sharply. They looked hard, yet there burned a fiery light. "Is that what you want to be, Zivaleh? Mossad, like Abba and someday Ari?"_

_Ziva had not given it much thought until now. She was only nine, after all, and much more concerned with the fate of Mary Lennox and her secret garden. But Abba was looking at her differently, almost appraisingly, and he looked happy with what he saw. _

_So she grinned up at Ari, displaying proudly her two new grown-up teeth, and nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes. Yes, Abba, I want to be Mossad."_

_Eli had never looked so happy. Tali shifted her head on Abba's shoulders, sniffling a bit to remind everyone of her presence. Eli looked down at the little girl and patted her curls a bit absently. "What about you, tateleh? Will you be Mossad, like Abba and Ari and Ziva?"_

_Tali pouted, making her nose crinkle. "No. I am going to be a fairy princess," she announced in her high-pitched little girl voice that, sometimes, Ziva could still hear today. _

_Eli had only smiled. "That sounds wonderful, too, tateleh," he said indulgently, and Tali smiled through her sniffles._

_Ziva wished she'd thought to be the princess first._

...

The day goes slowly. They find a body, and the brown curls make Ziva's stomach clench. Gibbs seems to note her discomfort.

"You okay, Ziver?"

"Fine," she says finally, although she's not sure how honest she's being. "I am fine, Gibbs."

Tony disagrees. His eyes are painfully understanding, so she looks away.

...

_Ziva was eleven, and feeling angry. She lay on her bed with her feet braced against the wall and her head hanging off the side of the bed, and glared at the ceiling with all the hatred her young heart could muster._

_"Ziva?"_

_Tali stood in the doorway with a doll hanging limply from one hand, thumb in her mouth. It was a habit, Ziva often had told her younger sister, much too babyish for a big girl of seven, but Tali just went about, serenely contrary, sucking her thumb until the skin was white and prunish. _

_"Go away, Tali," Ziva said sharply, transferring her glare to the upside-down image of her sister._

_"Why are you laying wrong-way-up?" Tali inquired interestedly, coming to stand in front of her. She regarded Ziva with wide brown eyes. "Are you trying to do Ari's training again? Ima says Ari was just kidding when he said he could make all the blood go to his brain."_

_Ziva remembers being terribly annoyed by her sister's naivety. "I knew that, Tali."_

_"Then why are you laying-"_

_"Because I want to," she had interrupted harshly, glaring all the harder at the ceiling. _

_"Why are you mad?" Tali sat down Indian-style on the floor directly beneath Ziva's head. She swatted playfully at the dark braid that swung like a pendulum in front of her._

_"I am not," Ziva said shortly, twitching her braid away from Tali. _

_"Oh." Tali put her thumb back in her mouth as she thought about this. "Then do you want to play fairies with me? You could be-"_

_"Fairies are not real."_

_This bit of blasphemy, delivered in a flat, toneless voice, left her little sister, Ziva remembers, utterly appalled._

_"Yes, they are! Ziva, of course they are! I saw them on the television. And Abba says-"_

_Ziva had suddenly remembered then that she herself had been bluntly cleared of such illusions at age five. And here was Tali, a big girl of seven, still believing fervently. Why had Abba never stopped her?_

_This had a great deal to do with the particular viciousness with which she answered. "Abba told me that they are not real. He told me."_

_Tali's face grew solemn with alarm. "Abba?" She repeated her plea again, louder. "Abba!"_

_Abba came into the room, a bit tired-looking. His glasses were crooked. "Tateleh, you know Abba said not to bother him while he is packing-"_

_"Abba, fairies are not real," Tali announced, taking her thumb out of her mouth to further emphasize.  
>Eli had looked taken aback. <em>

_"No, tateleh," he'd agreed finally. "They are not."_

_Tali put her hands on her hips. "You are very stupid, Abba," she scolded kindly. "Of course fairies are real. You just do not know."_

_Eli looked both irritated and amused. "Perhaps so, tateleh," was all he said, "perhaps so."_

...

The achingly familiar brunette is a bomb tech, as it turns out, and the irony is not lost on Ziva. She does her best to stay neutral, but she's not very effective, judging from the extra three seconds Abby adds to her hug.

"Anything?" Ziva asks finally. To her horror, her voice sounds choked. Immediately, Tony is at her side, studying her face with intent green eyes.

"Um, yes," Abby answers, looking from Tony to Ziva and back again. "Uh, yeah. Yes. Right. Okay."

What follows is a technological description that Ziva cannot bring herself to be interested in. When Tony bumps his shoulder softly against hers - she is not sure if it is accidentally - she shivers a little.

She feels, all of a sudden, terribly old.

...

_Ten-year-old Tali was a much more tolerable sister than the Tali of three years ago. She was a little taller now, but still small for her age, petite and spritely like the fairies she persisted in believing in. Sometimes Ziva still caught her sucking her thumb in her sleep. _

_"I cannot help it," she would insist, not the least bit abashed. "I do not have good dreams at night, Ziva."_

_This much was true. Tali often would come to the breakfast table with a tired smile and a nightmare to recount. _

_"I dream a lot of you," Tali said suddenly, looking up at her sister with large brown eyes. "I used to dream of Ari, but it has been you the last couple of weeks."_

_Ziva remembers being amused. In some ways, Tali was so childish, so naive, that you had to love her. It was the same naivety that often made Ziva's hands clench and her mouth taste bitter._

_"What about?" Ziva had asked, combing her fingers through Tali's halo of wild brown curls that she refused to brush. Ziva's slender brown piano-fingers began to rapidly braid the coils as Tali answered with a laugh._

_"Oh, lots of things. Mostly you try to kill me."_

_She can recall the feeling of surprise, almost amused, and yet angry. Sometimes Tali could be a little too insightful._

_"Tali, you are a very silly little girl," Ziva said finally, using her practiced I-am-older-than-you-therefore-I-know-best voice to hide her dismay. She finished her braid and started on another section of hair._

_Tali studied her left thumb, still a bit wrinkled and discolored, and smiled a bit sadly. "Yes, I know. But I do wish you would just tell Abba no, Ziva."_

_The sudden change of topic hadn't surprised Ziva nearly as much as it should have. Tali had talked of little else for the past several days. _

_"I cannot just tell Abba no," Ziva argued patiently. She carved out a new section of hair and continued her intricate braid. _

_"Of course you can!" Tali was surprised. "I have."_

_"What have you told Abba no about?" If her tone was sharp, it was for good reason. Abba had changed over the three years, been promoted. It was not safe to cross Eli David anymore. _

_"Oh, you know. Things." Tali gestured broadly to demonstrate 'things.' "He knows that I am not going to become Mossad. You can do the same, Ziva. Abba has connections. He can get you out of the IDF."_

_"Do not say such things," Ziva chided, tugging Tali's hair a bit to emphasize her seriousness. "It is our duty to protect Israel."_

_"And it is Abba's duty to protect us," Tali countered. Her eyes were serious when she turned to face her sister. "Just tell him no."_

_"I . . . cannot."_

_"You are scared of him," she noted. _

_Ziva was stung. "I am not scared of anything."_

_Tali nodded. She was, after all, only a ten-year-old with big eyes and crazy ideas. Ziva was still the infallible hero in her mind. "I know. You are very brave, Ziva. You are not scared of anything except Abba."_

_"You are braver," Ziva realized in a moment of bitter lucidity. Tali shook her head emphatically, pulling her latest braid from Ziva's fingers with the movement._

_"Oh, no. I am not brave."_

_Ziva laughed and tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. She went back to braiding. "What are you scared of, little girl?" _

_"I am scared of spiders," Tali answered promptly. "And snakes and olives and horror movies. And I do not like mustaches."_

_The sisters laughed in a way that Ziva never laughs now, with the kind of happiness she no longer knows. Then fourteen-year-old Ziva sobered. "You are so much braver than me, Tali."_

_Tali put her thumb in her mouth and was silent. "I am scared of Ari," she admitted after a while._

_Ziva drew back angrily. "Of Ari? Why? He is so good to you, to us! Do you not remember-"_

_"He used to be in my dreams." Tali's voice lisped a bit, inhibited by the thumb in her mouth. "And he was very different. And then he came home, and he was exactly like he was in my dreams. Different."_

_"He was injured," Ziva hastened to defend her hero. "Abba says healing takes a long time."_

_Tali smacked her lips and sucked a little harder at her thumb. Ziva waited. When nothing more came, she asked something that had begun to nag at her._

_"In your dreams, am I like Ari? Different?"_

_"Yes and no," was the cryptic answer. "You are different, but not like Ari. Ari just stood and looked and his eyes were very black. He told me things that I did not like."_

_"Like what?"_

_"Like things." Tali shrugged uncomfortably. "About Abba and about life."_

_Ziva smiled. "What do your dreams tell you about life, silly girl?"_

_"He said that life has no happy endings," Tali answered seriously. _

_Ziva was very quiet for a moment, remembering when Abba had sat her down, at age twelve, and told her very calmly and firmly that Ima was not coming back from the hospital. She had raged and sobbed and lamented the unfairness of it all. Abba had sat and looked at her. The reflection of the late afternoon light off his glasses had made his eyes look entirely blank. _

_"Life is not fair, Ziva," he had said quietly. "It is time you learned that."_

_Ziva looked at Tali's worried eyes, and she could not bring herself to play the blank-eyed breaker-of-the-truth._

_"You have strange dreams, tateleh," she said softly, keeping her eyes on the rich brown braid that was coming together under her skilled hands._

_"Yes," Tali agreed, removing her thumb and running its bumpy moist surface over her arm slowly. "I suppose I do."_

...

Somehow they end up in a dusty attic, with gunshots firing below and blood dripping from a gash on her hairline. She straddles the exposed rafter beam, with splinters digging into her jeans, as she races time.

The wires are tangled like a braid, and she maneuvers them deftly with her slender brown gun-fingers. She barely keeps a flashback of soft brown curls at bay, instead focusing on the plastic yellow and red beneath her fingertips. The luminous green numbers keep a steady countdown.

Sixteen minutes. Twenty-three seconds...twenty-two...twenty-one...

...

_Tali's nose wrinkled._

_"This is so not your color, Ziva. Could they not find you anything more . . . feminine?"_

_She had laughed. "It is the Defense Forces, not a grand ball, silly."_

_And Tali had nodded a bit sadly. "And you are a soldier, not a princess."_

...

_"What about you, tateleh? Will you be Mossad, like Abba and Ari and Ziva?"_

_The high-pitched voice. The three freckles that scrunched together when she wrinkled her nose._

_"No. I am going to be a fairy princess."_

...

"Ziva!"

Tony comes thundering up the stairs and stops short at the sight before his eyes. "Oh."

'Oh' indeed.

He strides across the room, boosting himself onto the rafter behind her. "How much time?"

She doesn't have time to answer, because her fingers are too busy weaving, and her mind is too busy whirling. There is blood on her face.

He looks for himself, then curses. She agrees wholeheartedly.

He does what he can to aid the process, calling a warning to Gibbs, dabbing at her cut. There are more gunshots below.

She almost loses it when he gathers her hair with his large hand, sweeping the loose curls out of her eyes, and presses a quick kiss to her neck. "You're doing great," he promises.

More gunshots.

Fourteen minutes. Twelve seconds...eleven...ten...

...

_"I thought Abba was making you stay home to study for your test?"_

_Twelve-year-old Tali had shrugged. "I told him no. He just nodded. He is very easy to order around. Perhaps that is why he was promoted?"_

_Ziva had laughed, a bit jealous. "I do not understand why Abba puts up with someone as disobedient as you."_

_Tali had laughed in agreement. "Sometimes I think he hates me."_

...

_"You are braver."_

_"Oh, no. I am not brave."_

...

_Early morning in Lisbon. A dark hotel room. A loaded gun. A mission._

_Short sentences with bare facts. No feelings. No emotions. No fear, whether of death or Abba or olives. _

_The phone rang. _

...

She cannot remember which wire is which all of a sudden. There are too many thoughts in her head, and she thinks she might explode. Perhaps that is why there is so much liquid leaking from her head.

"Ziva?"

Tony senses her hesitation. He dabs at the cut on her forehead, fingers lingering over her cheekbones, and shoots her a concerned look.

"Ziva?"

She is frozen. Someone is calling her name, but it is definitely not Tony.

Ten minutes. Fifty-eight seconds...fifty-seven...fifty-six...

...

_She picked up the phone._

_"Yes."_

_She could not remember her cover name, so she didn't state it, just waited for a reply. It was not who she was expecting._

_"Ziva?"_

_She choked a bit on her words. "Ari? I thought you were on a mission?"_

_"I was."_

_The significance of the words hits her. _

...

_"What do you think bravery is?" _

_Thirteen-year-old Tali was quieter, more pensive, but her hair was still curly and her thumb was suspiciously wrinkled some mornings. _

_"Bravery is having no fears," Ziva had answered at once with the words that had been drilled into her._

_Tali had shaken her head. Her curls had swished. _

_"You do not agree?" Ziva had been surprised, and a bit irritated. She was leaving in three days for her first Mossad training evaluation, and had better things to do than discuss morals with her naive little sister._

_"I think bravery is being scared," Tali said slowly, "and doing that scary thing despite your fears. To run into the gunfight, not away, because you should, not because you are not afraid of death."_

_Ziva had ruffed her sister's hair and turned away before rolling her eyes._

...

_"I am scared of spiders. And snakes and olives and horror movies. And I do not like mustaches."_

...

The wires are swimming before her eyes. Her vision is blurred, from her concussion or from tears, she does not know.

Tony senses her predicament, turning her face briefly and gently brushing teardrops from her cheeks.

"Do it for her."

She doesn't question how he knows.

Eight minutes. Forty-two seconds...forty-one...forty...

...

_"Ari? What is wrong?"_

_There was a long silence. She feared the connection had gone dead. "Ari?"_

_"Yes, Zivaleh, I am here."_

_Zivaleh. He had not called her that in years._

_"What is wrong?"_

_More silence. Then, "You heard about the bombing this morning?" _

_Her stomach dropped._

...

_"Why do you not want to join Mossad, Tali?" Twelve-year-old Ziva rolled over in bed to look at her little sister. Tali hadn't slept in her own bed for over three weeks now. Ziva hadn't protested._

_Tali removed her thumb from her mouth. "I want to be a mother. I want a baby girl who I can name Rose. I do not want to die."_

_Ziva had scoffed. "Abba will not let us die."_

_Tali looked at her seriously. "Do you think so?"_

...

Someone thunders up the attic stairs, but it is not Gibbs. Tony puts a bullet through the man's head before Ziva can even look up. There are more gunshots, and more heavy footsteps on the stairway.

"Don't stop," Tony instructs her, pulling his gun. "I've got your back, sweetcheeks."

She has never doubted it.

Six minutes. Fifty-five seconds...fifty-four...fifty-three...

...

_"Ziva?"_

_Ziva was ten and upset. Her hands were blistered, her head ached from concentrating, and yet she could not master her throwing knife. Abba had left the range, disgusted. She had walked the two miles home, because he had not waited with the truck for her to get over her tantrum. Her favorite shoes had been destroyed._

_"Want to play dolls?"_

_Ziva looked at the plastic baby doll that her six-year-old sister held. Abba had, after much pestering, bought it for Tali. It was the exact same doll that Ziva had coveted two years earlier. She had never asked for the doll, however. Abba did not approve._

_"Abba says they hide bombs inside dolls." _

_She does not know why she says it. She could only blame that little part of her that was not entirely human, the part that occasionally felt an overwhelming desire to hurt Tali._

_It worked. Tali drew back, stung. "Really?"_

_"Yes. They put them on the side of the road, like trash, and wait for spoiled little girls to come and find them."_

_Tali's eyes were huge. "Little girls?"_

_That terrible, wicked side of her would not relinquish its hold. Ziva nodded solemnly. "Yes. And then they explode."_

...

_"Red wire under yello-"_

_"Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity, you know."_

_Ziva looked up to see a curly-haired teenager with large brown eyes looking back. She almost doesn't recognize her sister, now sixteen._

_"Tali!"_

_Ziva jumped up and embraced her sister, wrapping her wiry, muscled arms around the slender, pixie-like form. _

_Finally, Tali drew back. "Why are you still in your fatigues?" Realization dawns on her. "You are going back already? But, Ziva, you just arrived-"_

_"It is a very important mission," she began to explain, but Tali cut her off with a hurt frown._

_"More important than family?"_

_She didn't have an answer, and Tali knew it. Never one to pour salt in a wound, however, her little sister dropped the topic._

_"So what are you whispering to yourself? Composing an epic poem on your most recent conquest?"_

_Ziva rolled her eyes. "Michael is not a conquest. And, no, I was going over bomb-diffusion techniques."_

_Tali's nose wrinkled, crinkling the three brown freckles. "Why?"_

_"For my cover role," Ziva explained. "I am an arms dealer, and-"_

_Tali interrupted. "Teach me?"_

_She was taken aback. "Why?"_

_The brown eyes that looked back were hard to read. Tali had grown up a little while she'd been gone. Part of Ziva missed that little girl. She wondered if Tali still sucked her thumb._

_"Just because."_

_Finally, Ziva had started explaining. She didn't like the look in Tali's eyes, but she wasn't sure there was any reversing it. She was not the only one who had changed_.

...

_"Yes. Ari? Ari, the bomb. What about it?" Ziva demanded, teeth clenched. She reached for her gun and began to disassemble it with her slender brown piano-fingers. _

_When Ari answered, his voice was choked. It did not sound like her infallible older brother at all._

_"I do not know where she learned so much about bombs. . ."_

...

There are five minutes left, and Ziva doesn't think she can do it.

Reality is not exactly her friend, but it's her constant companion, and it's one that she trusts.

Right now, reality is looking her in the face and telling her that it's not going to happen.

If it were just her, she would keep trying, and perhaps she would even get lucky. Reality isn't the same thing as inevitability, after all.

But it is not just her own welfare at stake, and she can't help but think of Tali as the numbers flash by. She turns to Tony.

"We have to get out."

Four minutes. Thirty seconds...twenty-nine...twenty-eight...

...

_She swallowed. "What do you mean?"_

_Ari's voice cracked. "She never was very good at taking orders."_

...

_"Why, Tali?" Ziva asked abruptly, as Tali's fingers twisted rapidly through the fake wires of Ziva's well-worn test model. "Why do you want to know how to-?"_

_"I had a dream last night," Tali says absently, blowing a chunk of hair out of her eyes as she hunches over the tangle of electronics. _

_Automatically, Ziva collects Tali's hair, pulls it to the nape of her sister's slender neck, and begins to braid. "I thought they stopped?"_

_"They did," Tali agrees, "for a while."_

_"What was it about?" _

_"You."_

_Ziva's fingers slipped a bit. "Me? Again? Was I trying to kill you?"_

_"No," Tali answers. Her fingers move as quickly as Ziva's, braiding wire, not hair. "It was about Abba, mostly. And you."_

_"And what happened?" Ziva kept her voice light, and her eyes on Tali's hair._

_"Nothing." Tali's voice was just as falsely cheerful. _

_"Nothing?" Ziva repeated, cocking an eyebrow._

_Tali turned suddenly, abandoning the fake bomb and pulling her hair from Ziva's grip. "Promise me that you will not end up like Abba, Ziva."_

_Ziva was surprised. "What do you mean?"_

_Tali's eyes were anxious. "Mossad. It is not . . . Do not let it become your life. Do not let it . . . take your life. Promise me, Ziva?"_

_The dumbfounded Ziva had promised. _

...

It's the smart thing to do, Ziva knows, but it doesn't make it any easier. The room swims a little before her eyes, but she doesn't let it show.

"You're sure?" Tony asks, eyeing her with cautious green eyes.

Yes.

No.

She doesn't know anymore.

Three minutes. Fifty-nine seconds...fifty-eight...fifty-seven...

...

_"Is she-"_

_Ziva can't bring herself to voice the thought. Ari's voice is harsh when he answers. _

_"She's dead. We couldn't even find a body."_

_"Then how do you-"_

_"She saved a bunch of people. She saw the bomb and warned everyone, then went back. She thought she could disarm it."_

_Stupid, stupid Tali and that stupid, suicidal frame of mind that she called bravery._

...

_"Oh, no. I am not brave." _

...

_"Bravery is being without fears."_

...

_"I think bravery is being scared," Tali said slowly, "and doing that scary thing despite your fears. To run into the gunfight, not away, because you should, not because you are not afraid of death."_

...

Two minutes. Eighteen seconds...seventeen...sixteen...

Ziva turns and runs back into the room.

...

_"You are very stupid, Abba. Of course fairies are real. You just do not know."_

...

_"And you are a soldier, not a princess."_

...

One minute. Forty seconds...thirty-nine...thirty-eight.

Tony runs back up the stairs. "The building's cleared. We can go."

Ziva shakes her head but does not look up. "In the boxes. Look."

Tony looks, and emerges looking shaken. "Is that-"

She nods. "Yes. Enough to incinerate the entire neighborhood."

Tony's eyes widen. "I've got to go tell Gibbs."

He darts across the room and presses a kiss to her temple. "I'll be right back," he promises. And then he's gone.

One minute. Thirty-one seconds...thirty...twenty-nine...

...

_Ziva could not speak, but Ari could not stop._

_"Why?" he raged. "Why would she go back? She had saved many."_

_"Tali," she said finally, and it hurt to say the name, "would never settle for just saving many. She wanted to save them all."_

_"So stupid. . ." Ari moaned._

_Ziva silently disagreed. _

_So brave._

...

One minute. Four seconds...three...two...

She's close. It's just a matter of time now, a race between her fingers and the steady blinking fluorescent on the screen below.

Tony thunders back up the stairs, announcing that the area is being evacuated. She hardly hears it.

Fifty-two seconds...fifty-one...fifty...

...

_She doesn't know why she hates her, but she does. It's something about the sunshine, and about butterflies, and about the way people's eyes light up when Tali speaks._

_It's in the crevices of Tali's prunish thumb, and in the child-like faith that everything eventually ends up happily-ever-after._

_Tali is good. She is sweet and innocent and utterly naive, and yet she is also utterly human. She is overly-sensitive and too insightful for her own good._

_She sees too much. She sees weaknesses and fears. She finds the beauty in them. She is everything that Ziva will never be. _

_Ziva is logical and methodical and smart. She is realistic and capable and dangerous._

_Ziva is, without a doubt, her father's daughter. He has poured everything he is into her._

_And yet he loves Tali._

_Tali is everything Eli worked so hard to stamp from Ziva, plus something more. She is unafraid of Abba. _

_She is everything he condemns, and yet he loves her in a way that he will never love Ziva._

_It is unfair._

_But life, as Eli David once told a brown-eyed, motherless twelve-year-old, is not fair. _

_It is time she learned that. _

...

Forty-six seconds...forty-five...forty-four...

"You're sure?"

Yes.

No.

She doesn't know anymore.

_'Bravery is being scared, but doing that scary thing despite your fears. To run into a gunfight, not away, because you should, not because you are not afraid of death. '_

She nods. "Yes. I am sure."

And suddenly she is.

Thirty-nine...thirty-eight...thirty-seven...

...

_The grave was simple, plain and white and as far from Tali as could be. Tali was warm and brown and full of life. White marble does not suit her._

_There was no body. It was never recovered. They bury an empty coffin._

_She's not at the funeral. She's busy killing people._

_Vengeance is cold and bitter and as far from Tali as could be. Tali was warm and brown and full of life. Reality, harsh and cold, does not suit her._

...

Twenty-two...twenty-one...nineteen...

"How long's it been?" Tony's voice is soft. She thinks he's talking mostly to calm himself, so she tries to be helpful by answering.

"Ten years."

He breathes out. "Wow."

She couldn't agree more.

Sixteen...fifteen...fourteen...

...

_The man was big and old and he had a mustache. Ziva almost cried when she saw it._

_Instead she laughed as she saw the fear in his eyes._

_The laughter drowned out the gunshot, but it doesn't erase the pain._

...

Twelve...eleven...ten...

It all comes down to this.

A decision that decides the course of not one life, not two, but hundreds.

She could run now. She'd survive, and so would many others. She can hear Ari's voice in her head now.

'She had saved many.'

But Tali was brave. Many wasn't good enough.

Ziva is not Tali. She is harder and colder and older and weaker. She will never be Tali, and she is reminded of this each time she looks into her father's eyes.

But now is her chance to make peace.

Closure.

She needs it so badly.

Tony's eyes, as they look back at her, are not brown, but green. But there is something in them that makes her remember.

Eight...seven...six...

...

_I am scared of spiders. And snakes and olives and horror movies. And I do not like mustaches._

...

She is never going to be Tali.

...

Five.

...

She knows that now.

...

Four.

...

She is just Ziva, who has been left to pick up the pieces. She hasn't done a very good job.

...

Three.

...

But that was then, and this is now.

...

Two.

...

And she knows what she has to do.

...

She cuts the wire.

...

One.

**What do you think? Review. **


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